Daily Archives: February 18, 2013

The National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) is recruiting for our 2013 summer internship programs. As a NASI member, we rely on your help to find excellent student talent. With your assistance, the most qualified upper division undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates looking to explore their next career choices, will have access to an unmatched internship experience.

NASI is looking for 15-20 outstanding summer interns for 2013. Think about the talented young people you know—students, mentees, interns, and relatives—and encourage them to apply for an exciting summer in Washington, DC. Undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students in various fields of study (such as Political Science, Economics, Social Work, Aging Studies, Journalism, Education, Social Policy, Psychology, Biology, History, Demography, Public Health, Health Sector Management, Health Policy and Administration, Human Development, Public Policy, Gerontology, International Affairs, Health Policy, and Sociology) should be encouraged to apply.

“A Palestinian fertility doctor said Thursday that he was helping about 50 women conceive children using sperm smuggled out of Israeli prisons, that four of the women were now pregnant after in vitro fertilization, and that one delivered a boy last summer, named Muhannad. . . . Dr. Khaizaran said he decided to embark on his unusual fertility experiment because by the time inmates with long sentences are released, their wives are often too old to bear children, leading them to marry younger women. He said he received a fatwa, or legal ruling, from a Muslim cleric permitting the procedure, which he does free of charge. Neither the doctor nor several women interviewed would reveal details of how the sperm was smuggled out.”

Here are some thoughts: First, there are a series of questions about the welfare of the children born from fathers in jail. My own work (see this and this and this and this) has argued that these kinds of Best Interests of the Resulting Child arguments often do not work, but certainly some others have (and will continue) to disagree me.

Second, there are some very interesting issues about rights to procreate of prisoners. There have been cases about rights to do sperm donation in jail in cases where there is no conjugal visits allowed. Here I think, especially for those facing life sentences or the death penalty, there is an interesting question of whether one has a right to produce a child for whom one will be a genetic parent and a legal parent but not a rearing parent in any meaningful way. Is a prohibition on allowing sperm donation to one’s wife while one is in jail a violation of one of the prisoner’s right to procreate? His wife? A woman with whom he has no pre-existing romantic relationship that wants to produce a child with him? And oh, by the way, what if the prisoner is a female and wants to gestate in prison?